“If the metaverse were a real revolution, it would already have happened!” 

Recent state­ments by Amer­ic­an Phil Spen­cer, head of Microsoft’s video game divi­sion, have raised many ques­tions, well bey­ond the circle of gamers. In an inter­view with the Wall Street Journ­al, he stated bluntly that a meta­verse was noth­ing more than “a poorly con­struc­ted video game. Oper­at­ing in a meta­verse that looks like a liv­ing room is really not how I want to spend my time,” he said. How­ever, he added that this tech­no­logy was still in its infancy, and that it would all “evolve”. Are these asser­tions to be read as a per­emp­tory pos­i­tion or as an affirm­a­tion of an unknown reality?

Since its birth in the research labor­at­or­ies of the 1950s and 1960s, the video game has been a faith­ful ambas­sad­or of new tech­no­lo­gies. Even today, it is still the ideal way of bring­ing cer­tain innov­a­tions to the gen­er­al pub­lic. From the com­puter revolu­tion to vir­tu­al real­ity, the video game is a born evan­gel­ist, as Raphaël Grani­er de Cas­sag­nac, writer, research­er at the CNRS in particle phys­ics and dir­ect­or of the “Sci­ence and Video Games” chair sup­por­ted by École Poly­tech­nique (IP Par­is) and Ubisoft, points out.

In fact, Phil Spen­cer makes an obser­va­tion that is well known to gamers. Meta­verses have been around for many years in the enter­tain­ment industry. In 1993, Steve Jack­son Games launched a massively mul­ti­play­er game, or MMO, called The Meta­verse. Today, avatars of League of Legends, Roblox or World of War­craft roam vir­tu­al worlds, meet­ing, chat­ting, trad­ing, and hav­ing great adventures. 

The video game is the ideal way to bring cer­tain innov­a­tions to the gen­er­al public.

By estab­lish­ing remote inter­ac­tions in a vir­tu­al world thanks to unpre­ced­en­ted means of com­mu­nic­a­tion, the emer­gence of social com­munit­ies has not only her­al­ded Face­book and Twit­ter, but also the meta­verse in a play­ful and pop­u­lar way. This is the mean­ing of Phil Spen­cer­’s words. But the lim­it of such a dis­course lies in the very char­ac­ter­isa­tion of the meta­verse, which goes far bey­ond its exclus­ively play­ful use. 

With the reclas­si­fic­a­tion of Face­book as a Meta, many people have taken Mark Zuck­er­ber­g’s defin­i­tion for gran­ted, i.e. a vir­tu­al space that any­one can vis­it using vir­tu­al real­ity head­sets and con­trol­lers. The meta­verse is infin­itely more access­ible. If it is indeed a per­sist­ent vir­tu­al uni­verse, per­man­ently open, where each indi­vidu­al can go via his or her avatar to be in the com­pany of oth­er people who are them­selves dis­tant from each oth­er, vir­tu­al real­ity head­sets are not at all necessary.

Clé­ment Merville, pres­id­ent of the com­pany Man­za­lab, relies on cog­nit­ive sci­ence to max­im­ise the feel­ing of pres­ence. This impres­sion is based on three pil­lars. The first is “the impres­sion of pres­ence of one­self in this uni­verse”, he says. The more the avatar resembles its own­er, the more eas­ily an indi­vidu­al can become incarn­ated in this vir­tu­al world. The second pil­lar of the meta­verse “is the feel­ing of spa­tial pres­ence, i.e. of the envir­on­ment in which the avatar is loc­ated”. What cog­nit­ive sci­ence recom­mends is that it should be real­ist­ic, as cred­ible as pos­sible. The avatars’ atten­tion must not be diver­ted by a dis­son­ant environment. 

Finally, the third and last pil­lar is to take into account the pres­ence of oth­ers, the feel­ing of com­munity, and it is based on the means of com­mu­nic­a­tion made avail­able to the par­ti­cipants. While for Clé­ment Merville, we will nev­er be able to achieve the intens­ity of the feel­ing of pres­ence in the real world, the meta­verse can come close by mak­ing com­mu­nic­a­tion as nat­ur­al as pos­sible and by redis­cov­er­ing the sense of inform­al­ity that it is imper­at­ive to recre­ate, those moments of impromptu exchange that are the cement of social life. 

This cog­nit­ive struc­tur­ing is a far cry from Mark Zuck­er­ber­g’s vis­ion, where the audi­ence, advert­ising, NFTs and video games take pre­ced­ence. And for good reas­on. Before being a film by dir­ect­or Steven Spiel­berg, Ready Play­er One was an anti­cip­a­tion nov­el by Ern­est Cline. A few months before pub­lish­ing his book, the author wanted to com­pare his vis­ion of the meta­verse with that of the Cali­for­ni­an start-up world. He went to meet Mark Zuck­er­berg on the one hand, and Palmer Luckey on the oth­er, the young cre­at­or of the com­pany Oculus, which had just brought vir­tu­al real­ity head­set tech­no­logy up to date with the com­put­ing power of the moment. 

Ern­est Cline adjus­ted the char­ac­ter­ist­ics of the meta­verse described in his nov­el after these two meet­ings. A few years later, Face­book bought the com­pany Oculus for two bil­lion dol­lars. The plan to cre­ate a play­ful and luc­rat­ive meta­verse had already exis­ted for a long time at the head of the Amer­ic­an com­pany. But the Oas­is of the book and film Ready Play­er One is far from being with­in our reach. In addi­tion to the sight and hear­ing covered by the head­sets, this type of meta­verse would need to speak to our oth­er senses as well, espe­cially with touch – not to men­tion the impres­sion of move­ment, which remains a major tech­nic­al obstacle. Should we choose to stay on our screens, as Phil Spen­cer points out? 

The meta­verse could help pro­duce ten times less green­house gases in the years to come.

No, because anoth­er future is already here. Com­pan­ies use meta­verses on a daily basis, such as Man­za­lab’s Teemew solu­tion or Gather­Town’s, which allows vir­tu­al events to be anim­ated on a cus­tom­is­able 2D map. This type of meta­verse, which uses less energy, could help pro­duce ten times less green­house gases in the years to come. Indeed, all the images needed to cre­ate the envir­on­ments in this type of meta­verse can be cal­cu­lated loc­ally, dir­ectly on the user­’s machine. The only inform­a­tion that would pass through the net­work, the heart of the pro­duc­tion of green­house gas emis­sions, would then be min­im­ised. This would give this emer­ging meta­verse oth­er dreams than advert­ising or NFTs.

Jean Zeid